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Alan's Story |
Alan's Story |
©2006-2008 Firma NORMAN. All Rights Reserved. Design: Alan Pacheco |
Just before or during the birth of a baby different complications could be present, and sometimes their effects are not visible at the time the baby is born, but such complications can result in associated conditions that will affect the functions and daily activities of a child. Alan was born on September 8, 1992 at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California. The course of my pregnancy with Alan was overall normal, and full term. During labor Alan suffered fetal distress due to his umbilical cord becoming tangled around his ankles. Therefore an emergency cesarean section was performed. Alan was born with an apgar of 10. In general, the apgar is registered twice for a newborn. This is at one minute and five minutes after the baby is born. Apgar is the score developed by the anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar in 1952. It was created to evaluate the physical condition of a newborn, and also to determine the need for any immediate treatment. By his first year of age Alan was doing most of the activities a baby his age was expected to do, except walking on his own, and he had crawled in a different way. The pediatricians kept giving us opinions such as "Every child is different, and even there are children who take longer to start walking. You should not worry about it." Alan has always shown to be very intelligent. He was very verbal and already talking fluently when he turned two years old. Actually when he was evaluated by a Pediatric Neurologist we were first very scared, but then really pleased when we heard him saying: "Your son is not normal. Alan is very bright" This is true. Alan is currently in 9th Grade, all of his classes are in the Honors program, a program for academically advanced students. When our child turned fifteen months old we noticed that he was walking holding on walls and furniture around the house but not on his own, therefore we took him for an orthopedic consultation to the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. After an extensive evaluation and X-rays we were informed that Alan had a subluxation on the left side of his hip. After this visit we were searching constantly for the appropriate treatment for our son to help him to start walking on his own. We visited several specialists, and when Alan was two and a half years old, he had his adductor muscles surgically lengthened, this was intended for him to walk. Alan had casts on both legs for eight weeks,and after the casts were removed he started physical therapy. When our son turned three years old he learned again how to walk without any difficulty (he was even running and jumping), but his gait was abnormal due to his pelvis moved without coordination. At this age Alan was already speaking, reading, and writing English and Spanish perfectly. By June 1999 Alan was evaluated in Mexico at the "Teleton Rehabilitation Center" and in January 2000 he started therapy. Ever since he is evaluated every six to twelve months and continues looking forward for his rehabilitation. We continued searching. Alan has had many methods of treatment during the last eleven years besides the traditional physical and occupational therapy. Just to mention some of them he has had Horse back riding therapy, Dolphin therapy, Hydrotherapy, Osteopath, Magnet therapy, and Chiropractic. But he never had one of the most important ones, this is Neuro Developmental Treatment. Also known as NDT-Bobath Method. It was developed by a British couple, the Neurophysiologist Dr. Karel Bobath and his wife Bertha, a physiotherapist. They created a combined method of evaluation, and early therapy to evaluate and monitor the normal development of a child. In June 2005 we found the Spider, and Norman Rehabilitation and Medical Center. Of course we made an extensive investigation as well as many questions about the program like any other parents who have been searching around of all the possible methods of rehabilitation. After all we set up a four week therapy session for Alan, and departed to Poland on July 30, 2005. As soon as we arrived to Norman Center in Koszalin, Poland our experience in regards to the conventional orthopedic evaluations was different. This time the consultation was impressive, the treatment plan that was presented was intense, not easy, but possible. In this way Alan started a therapy program specifically tailored for him that gave him three and a half hours of therapy during six days per week. The therapy started strengthening the center of gravity of our body: THE PELVIS. We can not expect that our legs or arms function symmetrically coordinated if the center of gravity is uncoordinated, weak, or flaccid. By the third week of therapy we decided to stay four more weeks due to the efficiency of Spider, and also because of Alan's opinion when he noticed the difference among the previous therapy programs. |
Alan and Mom during the first week in Poland |
Alan had such an obvious improvement in two months that was never seen before in many years of therapy. His posture is better, his trunk is stronger, and his pelvis is aligned, therefore his gait has improved. Alan feels confident as well as proud of himself. While I was observing the achievement of my son in just a short period of time I started talking about Spider to literally everybody, our relatives, friends, patients, and families with children with special needs. Afterwards Norman Rehabilitation and Medical Center gave me the position of their representative. I gladly accepted the proposal, and now we share our experience with other families that keep looking for alternatives in the process of the rehabilitation of their children. Now, as bilingual representatives of Norman Rehabilitation and Medical Center we would like to give our testimony and the necessary information for those children with special needs who can have the opportunity to give the first step in their rehabilitation having therapy in Spider. |
Alan Celebrates his thirteenth birthday at the Norman Center |